Unbeliever
by anamariewrites
Summary: Kakashi has lived through hell, but he has not seen God.


Word Count: 693

A/N: Just something I wrote for Kakashi's birthday that explores a different side of him. I was inspired by Hey-Diddle-Didde's _Little Prayers, _and I wanted to explore how Kakashi _might_ view any high powers. This does not necessarily reflect any of my personal views, but then again, it doesn't have to. It's fiction. Please, enjoy.

Yes, I am a day late, but I got lost on the road of life so... In the spirit of Kakashi: "Happy Birthday, Kakashi-sensei!"

Edit: 9/16/08. Large edit. A lot of things were removed, and a lot of things were added. It warrants a re-read, I think.

* * *

Kakashi doesn't believe in many things.

Kakashi doesn't believe in God or heaven or the devil because they're invisible entities—intangible—and there's nothing real his eye can't see. He has seen the world, fought with beasts, and contains the key to another dimension in the tomoes of his Sharingan. Kakashi can be ANBU and Death in the blink of an eye, racing through the trees like a demon, dripping blood and weighing lives in the palms of his gloved hands. Kakashi has lived through hell, but he has not seen God.

Kakashi is sure that he doesn't need a god or anyone to judge his sins and forgive them because Kakashi is unforgiveable—and his sins cannot be numbered. He has been sinning for years, decades, forever; killing, raping, and destroying until they all run together and he can't remember the last time he really understood why it was wrong. Kakashi is shinobi, and he sins.

Kakashi doesn't believe in eternity, because he's felt it—lived through it, all the years he fought in the war and bled and broke and bled, crawling through the dirt and dying a million times over as his comrades fell down, down, down—and he knows that even forever can come to an end. (Kakashi sometimes wishes he were ignorant; life cannot be lived in thirteen brief years, sometimes life is too short, too short.)

The only things Kakashi believes in are rough, carnal, and tangible. The leather of the kunai handle pressing comfortably into the leather of his gloves, the sound of the blade whistling through the air—making contact, because Kakashi knows enough not to miss. He believes in his Chidori, lightning sparking and igniting flames underneath his skin, crawling and ripping and bursting with the power that is his birthright. He believes, because it can be felt.

He believes in hatred and greed and sex—the type of sex that is the hard press of lips and the drawing of blood, bodies slamming against each other, angry and demanding; the ripping, the tearing, the burning. Kakashi _believes._

But Kakashi _doesn't_ believe in God.

Kakashi lies, and Enma has not pulled out his tongue. (His pillow faces north, but he just never _dies_.) He walks across his father's shrine, tracking mud from Rain and dripping down borrowed blood from the very tips of his silver-spattered hair, and doesn't bother to pray.

Kakashi used to believe in the Yondaime and the Sandaime and the White Fang; but Kakashi was foolish, because they were human, and no match for kunai and jutsu and the creeping insanity that Kakashi can now call by name.

Kakashi doesn't acknowlege what he cannot see, but every year, at the same time, in the same dusty little corner of his apartment, he gets on his knees and prays like he's believed all his life. He prays for his mother and his team because some people just aren't _meant_ to die forever. (Some people deserve to defy logic.) Kakashi prays monotonously enough and long enough to drown out the voices with the steady hum of his—just the bare minimum, see; he needs to save his voice for when his father comes to visit.

Sometimes, Kakashi takes off his mask and holds his breath until his face turns blue. (He thinks that suffocating to death must be the absolute worst.) Afterwards, he prays so long that his knees start turn numb; he prays for Kurenai and Asuma's seed, he intercedes for his students, and Genma and Gai, and for _the whole damn village_. Just because Kakashi is nothing if not thorough, and if there is a heaven, it wouldn't hurt for a good word to be put in.

The only person that Kakashi doesn't pray for is himself, he doesn't really think there's any point. Kakashi is the worst kind of man, and he already knows it. If anything, he can repent in whatever hell there is for men like him, but he's not holding his breath.

Kakashi hasn't seen God, yet.


End file.
